Reporters try to shame Kellyanne Conway over 'quip' remark, step on a rake instead

Greg P. | 9:51 AM on October 10, 2016

Lots of people are mad at Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway for saying on “Morning Joe” on Monday that Donald Trump’s plan to order a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was a “quip.”

Politico’s Blake Hounshell, for example (this was retweeted by BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith):

Kellyanne Conway said Trump’s threat to jail Clinton was just a “quip” https://t.co/4y1BY3MPIT

— Blake News (@blakehounshell) October 10, 2016

And now for the mic-drop from Kellyanne — it’s not her word, it’s from NBC:

@blakehounshell @BuzzFeedBen got the "quip" word from crack reporting at https://t.co/PqfRF5yp0y. See here, line 2. https://t.co/Jhtc5YMCgQ https://t.co/N3GN3wNI92

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) October 10, 2016

What’s worse for Hounshell is that the article he linked to in Politico actually puts “quip” in context:

“That was a quip. And I saw in NBC’s own reporting it was referred to as a quip, so I’ll go with NBC on it. He had already finished his statement. She said something like ‘that’s why you’ll never be president,’ and he said ‘you’d be in jail.’ And so that was his answer,” Conway said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Here are more journos taking issue with NBC’s choice of language, but blaming Kellyanne for it:

https://twitter.com/PoliticoRyan/status/785475040519266304